As the night wrapped up, with most players already gone haven’t been busted for hours, all that was left was the small contingent of tournament officials, and the lucky final six players to count up their chips before bagging and mixing them up.  Appropriate, because the Bicycle Casino, home of the WPT Legends of Poker event, which was somewhat short on Legends, had a mixed bag of final tablers.   

The final six came together after in crazy fashion.  Just like Bryan Devoshire’s flameout a big-stack hit the rail early surprising the small remaing crowd.  Vigen Manukyan knocked out the seventh place finisher and moved his stack to over 1.4 million.  Then the wheels came off.

Manukyanflopped an A to go withhis AQ.  He called Sam Stein’s all in.  Stein flopped a 7 to go with his 107.  Then the turn was a 10 and the river was a 7.  Goodbye almost 500k in chips.  Almost immediately after, Prahlad Friedman moves all in.  Manukyan has Kings and calls.  Prahlad is drawing thin with AK.  Flop brought the A and Manukyan watched more of his stack disappear.

The meltdown, mirroring Devoshire’s the day before continued when Manukyan pushed with pocket deuces and Friedman again won the hand holding two ladies.  Manukyan’s dreams of a million dollar score and a TV final table were dashed but… considering he won a $100 satellite to get his seat, he $64,400 payday was a HUGE profit.

Prior to that, the eliminations can fast and furious, and just as brutal.  Two former WPT champs, though probably not quite Legends of Poker themselves, Eugene Katchalov and Eric Hershler got sent rail-ward as the final 24 was cut to 6.   One of two November Niners Steven Begleiter’s second dream run of the year ended prematurely but perhaps fittingly in 9th place.  

The other November Niner Kevin Schaffel made it past 9th.  In fact, he made the cut to the top six.  Not only that, he’s sitting on the biggest stack left in the tournament.   He’ll be matching wits with Todd Terry, Mike Krescanko, Sam Stein, Prahlad Friedman and Toto Leonidas. 

Online poker players were sparsely represented: Freidman is one who will play online poker moreso than live but has some success transitioning to live play.  He’s gotten some TV time calling out Jeffrey Lisandro, mistakenly, for shorting the pot and for deep Main Event runs.  Another online pro Jonathan Little, got his start as FieryJustice when he’d play poker online, and though he didn’t make the money he was seen late in the tournament on the rail coaching Begleiter.

The final table will be anybody’s game but you got to think Friedman and Leonidas have to be the favorites.